August 13, 2019 • 10 mins
Today we meet two very unusual individuals, although the things these people were famous for couldn't be more different. Either way, they're both great additions to the Cabinet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When the stress of
(00:28):
life is getting you down, it's normal to want to
find a quiet place to decompress, somewhere far from the
hustle and bustle, where your troubles just sort of fade
off into the distance. Charles Blondine had a place like that,
and nothing could get to him while he was there.
Charles was born in northern France in eighteen twenty four
(00:49):
and took up gymnastics when he was five. Unlike other
boys at the time who studied to become doctors or
bankers or go on to do manual labor, Charles dreamt
of becoming a performer. He trained as an acrobat and
eventually debuted to the world as the Little Wonder, a
graceful performer who enthralled crowds with feats of agility. As
(01:09):
he got older, though his dreams of stardom grew bigger
and France was honestly just too small to contain them.
He got married, had three children and took his show
on the road well overseas. In eighteen fifty five, Charles
traveled to New York City to join a family of
French circus performers. They've been entertaining audiences for four generations
(01:30):
and often took on outsiders to flesh out their act.
Now that he was part of a large group, though,
Charles needed a way to stand out more importantly, he
had to earn his keep, and then it came to
him away to put his skills to the ultimate test.
To draw the largest crowds he'd ever seen, Charles would
cross Niagara Gorge on a tight rope. The woven hemp
(01:54):
tight rope he'd walk across would measure feet long and
about three inches in diaetter, which is smaller than one
of the credit cards in your wallet. It would be
suspended on sixty feet over the gorge, with the Niagara
River churning beneath him, and he refused to use a net,
claiming that preparing for disaster often invited it. Thankfully that
(02:16):
stubbornness worked to his advantage by furthering the attendance of
his audience. One thing was true about performances such as his,
as much as people wanted to see him cross the
gorge safely, they also wanted to see him fail. It
was something he got a kick on of two. He
loved it when people bet on the odds of him
falling to his death. On the morning of June fifty nine,
(02:41):
twenty five thousand cheering spectators gathered to watch Charles attempt
across the gorge. Among them were congressmen, judges, generals, and reporters.
Anyone who was anyone was at Niagara Falls watching Charles
put his life on the line, literally ultimate. For all
his preparation, Charles couldn't predict the deep sag in the
(03:04):
middle of the rope. It hung low in the middle,
and everyone said the dip would throw off his balance
and that the rope itself couldn't support him. One person
said he deserved to be dashed to atoms for his desperate, foolhardiness. Charles, though,
ignored them all. At five pm that afternoon, he took
his first step off the American side. He carried a
(03:26):
twenty seven foot long balancing pole in his hands to
steady himself. The crowd grew silent, Some averted their eyes,
unable to watch in case he didn't make it. After
several minutes, though roughly one third of the way across,
something unbelievable happened. Charles took a seat. Yeah, He sat
(03:47):
down on the rope and invited the tourist boat that
made of the mist to stop just below him. Using
a separate line, he pulled up a bottle of wine
from the boat and drake it as everyone's stare and awe.
When he was finished, he tossed the bottle and began
to walk again, at one point even running. He'd done it.
(04:09):
Charles Blondine had successfully crossed the Niagara Gorge on a
tight rope and enjoyed the tasty beverage along the way,
but his show wasn't over. After a brief rest, he
set out again, this time with something strapped onto his back.
About two feet out from the Canadian side, he stopped
and fastened his balancing pole to the rope, Then untying
(04:30):
the load on his back, he set up a Daguero
type camera on a stand and took a photograph of
the crowd before packing it back up and finishing the
journey back to the American side. He repeated his feet
again a few days later on July four of that year,
and several more times after that, varying the different tricks
he performed along the way. He once walked half the
(04:52):
rope facing forward and the other half backward. On another attempt,
he pushed a wheelbarrow all the way across, and during
was perhaps his most daring performance, he stopped in the
middle of the rope, unpacked a camp stove he'd been
carrying on his back, and cooked himself an omelet right
there on the rope. Now that's what i'd call a
(05:13):
well balanced breakfast. A good card shark can build up
a kind of reputation. They can be shifty, They know
(05:34):
how to read people, and they know exactly how much
trouble they can get themselves into before they're in too deep.
Joseph Lwell was quite the shark himself, and he was
known for it all around New York City in the
early nineteen hundreds. But it wasn't just his prowess with
a deck of cards that earned him a reputation. It
was his other passion, one even more dangerous than any
(05:56):
ticked off gangster waiting for his loan payment. You see,
Joseph loved the ladies, particularly the newly married ones. Aside
from the obvious problems with his vice of choicewies, New
York was nothing like current day New York. Women were
still seen more as virtuous property of their husbands and
fathers as opposed to people in their own right, and
(06:18):
if word ever got out about their misdeeds with Mr Elwell,
their reputations would be dragged down right along with his.
But Joseph couldn't help himself. He'd flashes bright white smile,
say a few charming words, and they'd fall head over
heels for the bridge King of Manhattan. Yeah that's right.
Joseph Elwell's game of choice wasn't Texas Hold Him or
(06:40):
five cards stud the kind of games you might associate
with a card shark. Now, his game of choice was bridge,
and if it was a sport, Joseph would be It's
Michael Jordan's. His skills, both at and away from the
table were legendary, as was the list of men who
wanted him dead. Jilted lovers and overprotective fathers threatened him
(07:01):
with all manner of violence. Even his own wife hated him, and,
as you might imagine, his infidelity eventually caused their separation. However,
none of the angry husbands ever seemed to seriously threaten him.
They'd all been angry, or jealous or hateful, but it
was all for posturing. Joseph just laughed them all off
and moved on to the next woman he saw, which
(07:23):
is what made what happened on jule N so strange.
The night before, Joseph had spent the evening with Viola Cross,
who had recently divorced from her husband and was looking
for some fun. The two head dinner and drinks at
the Ritz Carlton Hotel, followed by some revelry at Zigfield's
Midnight Frolic, a late night performance put on by the
(07:44):
women of Zigfield's Follies, just a less family friendly version.
Around three in the morning, Joseph arrived back home, where
he spent a few hours making phone calls. He placed
the last call just after six am, and then stepped
outside to fetch his morning paper from his stoop. Later
that morning, Joseph's housekeeper arrived to begin her daily cleaning.
(08:06):
As she started tidy and she noticed the door to
his living room was locked from the inside. She let
herself in and saw a man sitting in a chair
with the day's newspaper folded in his lap. He was
nearly bald, had no teeth, and looked deathly ill. For
a moment, she was taken aback by the presence of
a stranger in her employer's house. But then she took
(08:27):
a second look and realized she recognized the man. After all,
it was Joseph Elwell. The housekeeper said hello to him,
but he didn't respond, so she went over to check
on him, and that's when she saw it, the red
hole between his eyes. She screamed and fled the room
to call the police, and surprisingly, Joseph shot to the
(08:48):
head hadn't killed him. He was still breathing when the
authorities arrived to inspect the scene. He was too far
gone to speak, though, and shortly after paramedics carded him off,
he passed away. The NYPD noted that Joseph had been
shot at point blank range with the forty five, and
yet they ruled out suicide. That's because the police found
(09:09):
a single bullet on the table in front of him
and the cartridge on the floor beside him. The gun
that fired it, though, was gone. Nothing in the room
had been disturbed. Joseph hadn't been robbed, and there were
no signs of any kind of struggle. And the most
interesting detail of all was that the blood spatter on
the walls indicated the shooter had been crouched in front
(09:29):
of the late bridge player, suggesting that they probably knew
each other. But despite the evidence left behind, there was
one question still buzzing inside everyone's heads. How had the
shooter gotten away? All the windows in the room were
sealed and the door had been locked from the inside.
No way in, no way out. Joseph Lwell's murder remains
(09:53):
unsolved to this day, and after all these years, it's
unlikely anyone will end up cracking it. Mysterious end to
a complicated character, if there ever was one. Now that's
what I'd call curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
(10:16):
Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
about it over at the World of Lore dot com,
(10:38):
and until next time, stay curious.
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When the stress of
(00:28):
life is getting you down, it's normal to want to
find a quiet place to decompress, somewhere far from the
hustle and bustle, where your troubles just sort of fade
off into the distance. Charles Blondine had a place like that,
and nothing could get to him while he was there.
Charles was born in northern France in eighteen twenty four
(00:49):
and took up gymnastics when he was five. Unlike other
boys at the time who studied to become doctors or
bankers or go on to do manual labor, Charles dreamt
of becoming a performer. He trained as an acrobat and
eventually debuted to the world as the Little Wonder, a
graceful performer who enthralled crowds with feats of agility. As
(01:09):
he got older, though his dreams of stardom grew bigger
and France was honestly just too small to contain them.
He got married, had three children and took his show
on the road well overseas. In eighteen fifty five, Charles
traveled to New York City to join a family of
French circus performers. They've been entertaining audiences for four generations
(01:30):
and often took on outsiders to flesh out their act.
Now that he was part of a large group, though,
Charles needed a way to stand out more importantly, he
had to earn his keep, and then it came to
him away to put his skills to the ultimate test.
To draw the largest crowds he'd ever seen, Charles would
cross Niagara Gorge on a tight rope. The woven hemp
(01:54):
tight rope he'd walk across would measure feet long and
about three inches in diaetter, which is smaller than one
of the credit cards in your wallet. It would be
suspended on sixty feet over the gorge, with the Niagara
River churning beneath him, and he refused to use a net,
claiming that preparing for disaster often invited it. Thankfully that
(02:16):
stubbornness worked to his advantage by furthering the attendance of
his audience. One thing was true about performances such as his,
as much as people wanted to see him cross the
gorge safely, they also wanted to see him fail. It
was something he got a kick on of two. He
loved it when people bet on the odds of him
falling to his death. On the morning of June fifty nine,
(02:41):
twenty five thousand cheering spectators gathered to watch Charles attempt
across the gorge. Among them were congressmen, judges, generals, and reporters.
Anyone who was anyone was at Niagara Falls watching Charles
put his life on the line, literally ultimate. For all
his preparation, Charles couldn't predict the deep sag in the
(03:04):
middle of the rope. It hung low in the middle,
and everyone said the dip would throw off his balance
and that the rope itself couldn't support him. One person
said he deserved to be dashed to atoms for his desperate, foolhardiness. Charles, though,
ignored them all. At five pm that afternoon, he took
his first step off the American side. He carried a
(03:26):
twenty seven foot long balancing pole in his hands to
steady himself. The crowd grew silent, Some averted their eyes,
unable to watch in case he didn't make it. After
several minutes, though roughly one third of the way across,
something unbelievable happened. Charles took a seat. Yeah, He sat
(03:47):
down on the rope and invited the tourist boat that
made of the mist to stop just below him. Using
a separate line, he pulled up a bottle of wine
from the boat and drake it as everyone's stare and awe.
When he was finished, he tossed the bottle and began
to walk again, at one point even running. He'd done it.
(04:09):
Charles Blondine had successfully crossed the Niagara Gorge on a
tight rope and enjoyed the tasty beverage along the way,
but his show wasn't over. After a brief rest, he
set out again, this time with something strapped onto his back.
About two feet out from the Canadian side, he stopped
and fastened his balancing pole to the rope, Then untying
(04:30):
the load on his back, he set up a Daguero
type camera on a stand and took a photograph of
the crowd before packing it back up and finishing the
journey back to the American side. He repeated his feet
again a few days later on July four of that year,
and several more times after that, varying the different tricks
he performed along the way. He once walked half the
(04:52):
rope facing forward and the other half backward. On another attempt,
he pushed a wheelbarrow all the way across, and during
was perhaps his most daring performance, he stopped in the
middle of the rope, unpacked a camp stove he'd been
carrying on his back, and cooked himself an omelet right
there on the rope. Now that's what i'd call a
(05:13):
well balanced breakfast. A good card shark can build up
a kind of reputation. They can be shifty, They know
(05:34):
how to read people, and they know exactly how much
trouble they can get themselves into before they're in too deep.
Joseph Lwell was quite the shark himself, and he was
known for it all around New York City in the
early nineteen hundreds. But it wasn't just his prowess with
a deck of cards that earned him a reputation. It
was his other passion, one even more dangerous than any
(05:56):
ticked off gangster waiting for his loan payment. You see,
Joseph loved the ladies, particularly the newly married ones. Aside
from the obvious problems with his vice of choicewies, New
York was nothing like current day New York. Women were
still seen more as virtuous property of their husbands and
fathers as opposed to people in their own right, and
(06:18):
if word ever got out about their misdeeds with Mr Elwell,
their reputations would be dragged down right along with his.
But Joseph couldn't help himself. He'd flashes bright white smile,
say a few charming words, and they'd fall head over
heels for the bridge King of Manhattan. Yeah that's right.
Joseph Elwell's game of choice wasn't Texas Hold Him or
(06:40):
five cards stud the kind of games you might associate
with a card shark. Now, his game of choice was bridge,
and if it was a sport, Joseph would be It's
Michael Jordan's. His skills, both at and away from the
table were legendary, as was the list of men who
wanted him dead. Jilted lovers and overprotective fathers threatened him
(07:01):
with all manner of violence. Even his own wife hated him, and,
as you might imagine, his infidelity eventually caused their separation. However,
none of the angry husbands ever seemed to seriously threaten him.
They'd all been angry, or jealous or hateful, but it
was all for posturing. Joseph just laughed them all off
and moved on to the next woman he saw, which
(07:23):
is what made what happened on jule N so strange.
The night before, Joseph had spent the evening with Viola Cross,
who had recently divorced from her husband and was looking
for some fun. The two head dinner and drinks at
the Ritz Carlton Hotel, followed by some revelry at Zigfield's
Midnight Frolic, a late night performance put on by the
(07:44):
women of Zigfield's Follies, just a less family friendly version.
Around three in the morning, Joseph arrived back home, where
he spent a few hours making phone calls. He placed
the last call just after six am, and then stepped
outside to fetch his morning paper from his stoop. Later
that morning, Joseph's housekeeper arrived to begin her daily cleaning.
(08:06):
As she started tidy and she noticed the door to
his living room was locked from the inside. She let
herself in and saw a man sitting in a chair
with the day's newspaper folded in his lap. He was
nearly bald, had no teeth, and looked deathly ill. For
a moment, she was taken aback by the presence of
a stranger in her employer's house. But then she took
(08:27):
a second look and realized she recognized the man. After all,
it was Joseph Elwell. The housekeeper said hello to him,
but he didn't respond, so she went over to check
on him, and that's when she saw it, the red
hole between his eyes. She screamed and fled the room
to call the police, and surprisingly, Joseph shot to the
(08:48):
head hadn't killed him. He was still breathing when the
authorities arrived to inspect the scene. He was too far
gone to speak, though, and shortly after paramedics carded him off,
he passed away. The NYPD noted that Joseph had been
shot at point blank range with the forty five, and
yet they ruled out suicide. That's because the police found
(09:09):
a single bullet on the table in front of him
and the cartridge on the floor beside him. The gun
that fired it, though, was gone. Nothing in the room
had been disturbed. Joseph hadn't been robbed, and there were
no signs of any kind of struggle. And the most
interesting detail of all was that the blood spatter on
the walls indicated the shooter had been crouched in front
(09:29):
of the late bridge player, suggesting that they probably knew
each other. But despite the evidence left behind, there was
one question still buzzing inside everyone's heads. How had the
shooter gotten away? All the windows in the room were
sealed and the door had been locked from the inside.
No way in, no way out. Joseph Lwell's murder remains
(09:53):
unsolved to this day, and after all these years, it's
unlikely anyone will end up cracking it. Mysterious end to
a complicated character, if there ever was one. Now that's
what I'd call curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
(10:16):
Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
about it over at the World of Lore dot com,
(10:38):
and until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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